Te­mer sworn in Brazilian pres­i­dent

MICHEL Te­mer, Brazil’s for­mer vice pres­i­dent, has been sworn in as the coun­try’s new pres­i­dent, a few hours af­ter the coun­try’s Se­nate voted to re­move Dilma Rouss­eff from of­fice.

Te­mer (75) raised his hand and swore to up­hold the con­sti­tu­tion, draw­ing loud ap­plause from his con­ser­va­tive sup­port­ers at Wed­nes­day’s cer­e­mony in a packed Se­nate cham­ber. He is ex­pected to stay in power un­til the next sched­uled elec­tion in late 2018.

Te­mer promised a “new era” of gov­ern­ment for Brazil.

“To­day we in­au­gu­rate a new era of two years and four months” to see out the cur­rent pres­i­den­tial man­date, Te­mer told his min­is­ters at a tele­vised cab­i­net meet­ing.

Al Jazeera’s Lu­cia New­man, re­port­ing from the cap­i­tal, Brasilia, said the new pres­i­dent now car­ried “all the weight of this coun­try on his shoul­ders.

“We are talk­ing about a mas­sive $60bn deficit, the worst re­ces­sion this coun­try has been in, dou­ble-digit in­fla­tion and mil­lions of peo­ple out of work.”

“They de­cided to in­ter­rupt the man­date of a pres­i­dent who had com­mit­ted no crime. They have convicted an in­no­cent per­son and car­ried out a par­lia­men­tary coup,” Rouss­eff said in a state­ment fol­low­ing the Se­nate vote.

Speak­ing to re­porters, Jose Ed­uardo Car­dozo, Rouss­eff ’s lawyer, said the for­mer pres­i­dent would ap­peal against her im­peach­ment. But sev­eral mo­tions filed to the coun­try’s high­est court through­out the im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings have failed.

In a sep­a­rate vote later on Wed­nes­day, sen­a­tors de­cided not to ban Rouss­eff from seek­ing a public of­fice for the next eight years.

Rouss­eff, from the left­ist Work­ers’ Party, is ac­cused of tak­ing il­le­gal state loans to patch bud­get holes in 2014, mask­ing the coun­try’s prob­lems as it slid into its deep­est re­ces­sion in decades. — AFP